Personality in Blue Tits (<i>Cyanistes caeruleus</i>) and its Effect on Their Breeding Success

Colchester, Claire; Harrison, N. M.

doi:10.1111/eth.12516

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“… 14 ). Indeed, personalities have now been associated with key elements of evolutionary fitness such as survival 9 and reproductive success 5 , 21 . Furthermore, individuals with different personality types have been shown to play different ecological roles (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repeatability and degree of territorial aggression differs among urban and rural great tits (Parus major)

Hardman

Dalesman

2018

Sci Rep

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Animals in urban habitats face many novel selection pressures such as increased human population densities and human disturbance. This is predicted to favour bolder and more aggressive individuals together with greater flexibility in behaviour. Previous work has focussed primarily on studying these traits in captive birds and has shown increased aggression and reduced consistency between traits (behavioural syndromes) in birds from urban populations. However, personality (consistency within a behavioural trait) has not been well studied in the wild. Here we tested whether urban free-living male great tits show greater territorial aggression than rural counterparts. We also tested predictions that both behavioural syndromes and personality would show lower consistency in urban populations. We found that urban populations were more aggressive than rural populations and urban birds appeared to show lower levels of individual behavioural repeatability (personality) as predicted. However, we found no effect of urbanisation on behavioural syndromes (correlations between multiple behavioural traits). Our results indicate that urban environments may favour individuals which exhibit increased territorial aggression and greater within-trait flexibility which may be essential to success in holding urban territories. Determining how urban environments impact key fitness traits will be important in predicting how animals cope with ongoing urbanisation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repeatability and degree of territorial aggression differs among urban and rural great tits (Parus major)

Hardman

Dalesman

2018

Sci Rep

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“…Many studies in avian evolutionary ecology aim to identify factors associated with variation in reproductive success, whereby reproductive success is often treated as a continuous variable, for example measured as the number of offspring that fledge or the proportion of hatchlings that fledge (Mutzel et al., , Colchester & Harrison, ; Pollock et al., ). However, our results show that complete brood failure and partial brood loss are typically caused by different processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, we report on a 7-year study of blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) in which we used a uniquely comprehensive dataset on parental nestbox visits to investigate the association between parental behaviour and nestling mortality. The blue tit and its close relative the great tit (Parus major) have served as model species in evolutionary ecology and many studies have identified factors that are associated with variation in nestling survival until fledging, such as the degree of urbanization (Chamberlain et al, 2009;Pollock, Capilla-Lasheras, McGill, Helm, & Dominoni, 2017), timing of reproduction (Reed, Jenouvrier, & Visser, 2013;Verhulst & Nilsson, 2008), habitat characteristics (Lambrechts et al, 2004;Tremblay, Thomas, Lambrechts, Blondel, & Perret, 2003) and personality traits (Colchester & Harrison, 2016;Mutzel, Dingemanse, Araya-Ajoy, & Kempenaers, 2013). However, even in these intensively studied species, little is known about the proximate causes underlying mortality during the nestling period at individual nests.…”

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confidence: 99%

Complete brood failure in an altricial bird is almost always associated with the sudden and permanent disappearance of a parent

Santema

Kempenaers

2018

Journal of Animal Ecology

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A central goal in evolutionary ecology is to identify factors that explain variation in reproductive success, i.e. in the number of offspring produced. In altricial birds, a substantial part of this variation is determined by the number of nestlings that die before fledging, but surprisingly little is known about the proximate causes of offspring mortality during the nestling period. We used a uniquely comprehensive dataset of parental nestbox visits from seven breeding seasons to investigate the association between parental behaviour and nestling mortality in a population of blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus). In almost all nests that suffered complete brood mortality one of the parents had suddenly disappeared during the nestling stage. In contrast, parental disappearance in nests with partial brood mortality was rare and equally common as in nests with no brood loss. With few exceptions, parents that disappeared during the nestling stage were never observed again and never returned to breed. In contrast, parents that remained after their partner disappeared were equally likely to be observed again or return to breed as parents of nests where both parents stayed. Visit rates at nests where a parent would disappear did not differ from those at nests where both parents stayed. Taken together, our results show that - in contrast to partial brood failure - complete brood failure is almost always associated with the sudden and permanent disappearance of one of the parents, probably due to predation. Partial and complete brood mortality should be treated as distinct processes that have different underlying causes.

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“…Also, the successful urban colonizer must adopt or express substantial behavioral plasticity to different habitat structures and the density of the human population in towns [5,8,9]. Although many studies have analyzed the urbanization process, much less is understood about how animal populations differ in habitat requirements between urban and rural areas and how this difference mediates the behavior of animals [8,[10][11][12][13][14]. The selection of sites by animals to meet their requirements is a behavioral process itself; however, it is more related to physical components of the environment rather than any other types of behavior linked with the presence of conspecifics or different species (e.g., aggressive behavior or flocking).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Little Owl Aggression and Territory in Urban and Rural Landscapes

Grzywaczewski,

Morelli,

Skórka

2024

Animals

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Urbanization is a major land use change across the globe with vast effects on wildlife. In this paper, we studied (1) the territorial displays of Little Owls in urban and rural landscapes, analyzing also (2) the size and habitat composition of the territories, and (3) the factors affecting territory size in both landscapes. To do that, we used t-tests, Principal Components Analysis, and General Linear mixed model procedures. The territory size was smaller in urban than in rural landscapes. Urban territories of Little Owls are characterized by a lower cover of grassland, tall crops, short crops, gardens, and orchards, as well as a higher cover of built-up areas than territories in rural landscapes. Territory size in rural landscapes was negatively correlated with seasonal progress and positively correlated with altitude. The rate of territorial displays was similar between urban and rural territories; however, birds differentially utilized various structures. In urban territories, birds mostly used buildings, whereas in rural territories, birds used electric pylons and trees. The compositional differences between territories in the two landscapes may have important consequences for other behavior types and possibly reproductive output in this species.

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Personality in Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) and its Effect on Their Breeding Success

Abstract: In this study, we investigated whether blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) showed 22

Cited by 10 publications

References 32 publications

Repeatability and degree of territorial aggression differs among urban and rural great tits (Parus major)

Repeatability and degree of territorial aggression differs among urban and rural great tits (Parus major)

Complete brood failure in an altricial bird is almost always associated with the sudden and permanent disappearance of a parent

Little Owl Aggression and Territory in Urban and Rural Landscapes

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